My life doesn't seem to have changed a great deal in the past year other than I got a slightly better job and a girlfriend

Hm yeah a little less speed and endurance than the Envenomation days (it'll come back with time), but tighter and more mature, I think.

Tighter was definitely what I was getting at, his feet have always been good, but at high speeds they did get a little bit.. "human" sounding. He is more robotic now.

Yeah I must have. I think anally as well. so a snow emergency was declared, and there were are playing the biggest club in Boston and no parking available. We managed to draw in about 200 + but the place can hold a shitload more. Well the bar loved us so we will be back for 2 nights.....

As a totally shitty drummer, and knowing what I like to hear from drummers, that was pretty slick. Totally appropriate to the style. The feet are the thing, really, more than the hands. My feet are wretchedawfulterrible- my hands are actually pretty good, and if I never had to hit a kick drum... But yeah, if you can lay it down with your feet, everything in between doesn't matter, almost. You've defined it with your feet. Anything coming from the rock-and-roll tradition, or even shit predating that from the blues/jazz tradition, if the bass drum and bass stringéd thing are tight, you are golden and everyfuckingthing above that can be a sloppy mess and your band- if the songs are cool- will sound awesome. If you don't have a cool rhythm section, you are dick'd. If the kick and bass are slamming, you can have nutso hands on the kit, sloppy guitars and a technically awful singer, and, theoretically, be cool as hell. You wanna dispute me on this? Didn't think so, 'cause I'm betting you all liek some fuckedup sounding bands.

Gigging with industrial folks and seeing those sorts of bands, I see a few e-kits or hybrid kits. I wouldn't mind seeing them more in a metal context. Let's be honest here: we know those ain't "real" drums- and so what? IMO the issue is feel for the drummer first, second is if the goods are being delivered through the PA, and that's probably the easier of the two to take care of. My one objection would be the sheer sonic weight of a real mic'd kit, done right. It's its own thing, and a sound I like, but not necessarily one appropriate for that genre or what everyone wants. I have friends in an industrial band who have had their drummer switch to a hybrid thing for the "real" sounds because they like the weight of their dude beating the fuck out of his kit, and it works for their more rock-flavoured stuff. Garda does the same thing with mostly "real" drums. The goth/industrial folks figger'd it out a good while back- now, when we see d00ds roll in with a real kit, we know they're gonna groove hard, and mostly lay into the kick(s) and snare like it their sister- and all the prettythings will be shaking their . All the people listening to awesome DM are musicnerds, right? They know the drums are bullshitsounds, mostly. It's its own kind of cool visually, we know what we're getting, screwit. I'd like to see more.

That's sorta the worst-ish. The place is huge but there ain't no one there. Same deal happened with the last Garda show. Weather was shitty as hell, no one came. It earned us some gigs though. We've moved up in the world venue-wise; our next book'd stuff is at Very Large Venues Indeed, at least from our perspective. Would you rather get a hundred folks in a shithole or a thousand in a theatre? Okay, bad question, because sometimes the first answer is the right one. But you get what I mean- it's stepping up the level of prestige. I am speaking from the Original Band Perspective here though- but you get that.

On the subject of tight rhythm sections... this clip might be making me into a believer:

Yarr, i don't know if all of them are on youtube, but the full stack of those outtakes are here: http://www.saladrecords.com/bonhamfiles.htm

So much of his playing is just not obvious or easy to hear in listening to the songs. He was actually possibly the bossest of bosses.

Blue Tape, JB Weld, Scrap Cardboard, a Speed Square. Is there anything else that would be required to build an empire, army, or shelter? WD40 maybe? A chainsaw?

A lot of the subtlety gets lost on record. He was not a one-dimensional slugger by any means. His sense of groove and his dynamics are what most folks seem to miss- and what makes him cool.

And of course Geoff poasts the Fool In The Rain one. Because that one is awesomely awesome. Love the what sounds like double-kick accents at 1:48 and 1:50. The kick drum itself is really interesting to listen to- is part of what we're hearing in the verse starting around 1:53 him burying the beater and then pulling it away and we hear the sound of that? And he doesn't play the chorus like that. (Or is he doing that on a second kick drum, the soft hits and the end of every bar.) But there's some serious hat action going on there too.

That is some seriously good-ass drumming there.

The WD40 and chainsaw would have their uses.

Happy new year, my Maplitonian brethren

I have got dat super chronic/pleasant feeling LSD, yo. Last night was one of the funniest nights of my life.

Waiting for the delivery guy to come so I can have NAD. They were supposed to come between 11:50 and 12:50. Its now 14:10

Motherfucker never showed

Sadness. What sort of NA were you expecting on this D, anyhoo?

That is one happy delivery guy rocking to your NA.

Just a Yamaha THR10 for home. Cool little amps.

oh shit - over at maps 1.0 or maybe 2.0 I had posted some old demo clips of an old cover band I was in (classic rock) that had some Skynyrd tunes and other shit, and Geoff had mentioned if I could find the tracks he would like to goofy sing over them. Well, I couldn't remember the studio or the guy who recorded it. Well, as it happens, about 2 weeks ago, GnR needed a fill in drummer for a gig and we used the bass players drummer from his VH project, and we go to practice over at the drummers place... it was the studio it was recorded at and the drummer who I had not met was the engineer.... small world. He remembered the project, I didn't even ask if he still had the stuff but I thought it was funny after these years to run into this guy. BTW, he is an awesome drummer and i believe is going to be a full time replacement for the GnR drummer.

Shit, I want to try one of those....